Thursday, August 23

I hate to trash my "home" state...

Yeah I'm not going to testify about this story on the grounds that it may incriminate me.

But hey, Alabamians don't need sex toys, because they get off on executions!

In 2005, Alabama sentenced more people to death than Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee, combined," according to John Carroll, dean of the Cumberland School of Law [in Birmingham].

Alabama is the only state that does not provide indigent Death Row inmates with counsel. Alabama does not use the technology that could assist the accused, as in the case of recently executed Darrell Grayson, chairman of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, in whose case DNA testing could have provided exculpatory evidence.

Alabama has refused to make its lethal injection protocol public. Prejudiced Alabama lawyers handle cases largely comprised of poor racial minorities. The prosecuting attorney referred to Death Row inmate Luther Williams as a "little black rat," according to trial transcripts examined by the board of Holman prison.

Alabama is scheduled to execute Williams today. Despite the fact Williams turned 20 when still in the ninth grade and had been placed on anti-psychotic drugs, there was no money provided for psychological testing.

13 comments:

This is so disturbing at so many levels. I guess that one thing that jumps off the page at me, sex toy story notwithstanding, is that AL is also a very so-called "Christian" state.

I say so-called as a practicing, albeit to my own experience and not wingnutty practice, progressive Catholic who is pro-choice.

It reminds me something that a very radical nun said on tv when in a debate "oh fine... you want to get them born and then figure out how and when to execute or kill them later."

In a place where the 10 Commandments reign supreme, I find it odd that it is so easy to kill.

It is so tragic. Yet the "small government conservative" types want enough government to keep the Rabbit out of your "garden".

Go figure. I was about to (as you know BG) go write some snark, but now my mood has changed. I am just sick of all this nonsense. And I furious at all the right wing nutty christians for wasting their time on such idiot bs when real work actually caring for life can be done.

But this is how we deal with the mentally ill here in the US of A. We cut funding to all those nice mental health programs and then take care of them in the judicial system.

This is even more frustrating when you see these kids come up through the system, warning sign after warning sign, with all these people saying "somebody oughtta do something -- that kid's going to wind up hurting somebody" knowing damn well that there isn't any help for people like that.

Sorry. I just found out that a kid I had trouble with as a sixth grader just shot another kid I had in school. Everyone's saying we should have seen the signs. We did. We reported him to social workers, tried to get him involved in afterschool projects, tried to get him interested in SOMETHING besides gang culture... and what good did it do anybody?

funny thingi was cleaning out a file cabinet at work (i am moving offices down the hall -- a bit smaller but i get the fancy schmancy HD television hanging on the wall)

there were files and crap in this thing since 1965! not kidding. (this building was built in the '30s and some people probably havent left since then -- including this file cabinet)

but i found an envelope that had a few weird things in it --- including a political button that said "Wallace for President" - "Stand Up For America - 1968" and a picture of that George himself. (there was also a Nixon Agnew button and a subway token)